Turning On The Giant Faucet Of Bullshit - US Politics February 2025

The acting head of FEMA is just unliterally deciding that Congress made a whoopsie pic.twitter.com/7jAeT9uNpC

— Jeremy 'adjusted for inflation' Horpedahl 📈 (@jmhorp) February 10, 2025

Musk can just overrule Congressional laws he does not like . Awesome

Meanwhile on another item where Congress was not consulted--

Deferred Resignation for federal government workers plan deadline still on pause by Judge indefinitely until he rules on preliminary injunction request

https://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-decide-fate-trumps-federal-buyout-offer/story?id=118642464&cid=social_twitter_abcn

I think there's a decent chance that Musk/DOGE will be over by the end of February

― Andy the Grasshopper

I think there's a decent chance Musk will try to shut down every agency by the end of February

There is a non-zero chance that Elon Musk will be murdered this year.

In fact, I would say there is a non-zero chance that we will see more political assassinations in the US in 2025 than we've seen since 1968.

Many poll options here..

I genuinely don't get how he or Trump are even still alive, they don't sleep, Elon takes a shitload of stimulents and Trump eats like garbage, they're angry all the time, like is none of that stuff actually bad for you

Remember when people talked about the Emoluments Clause?

Now you get Emolumints on your pillow when you stay at Trump resorts.

It takes a lot to kill rich people. Did you see Sheldon Adelson near the end?

only when I'm laying in bed unable to move

I think there's a decent chance Musk will try to shut down every agency by the end of February

― curmudgeon,

He will try.

The corruption is the thing I've been hammering most in my utterly ineffectual and useless social media posts, because for all the legitimate and scary concerns about authoritarianism, it is all ultimately in service of world-historical cash grabs.

"Hey, I'm willing to give up my retirement if it makes the libs cry more!"

These maga guys got scammed

Elon takes a shitload of stimulants

pretty sure Trump is blotto on Adderall most of the time as well, hence the 3am tweets

The thing is though--what Musk is doing is just the stuff Republicans have been fantasizing about for decades. GOP candidates were running on shutting down the Department of Education back in 2008. People like us have been living in a world where stuff like slashing government agencies willy-nilly is unthinkable, but like half the country has been howling for it.

So Molly Jong-Fast tweeted yesterday "I don't think the richest guy in the world should be cutting funding for cancer research. Musk responded- "I'm not. WTF are you talking about?
Jong-Fast tweeted this Washington Post article "nih-cuts-billions-dollars-biomedical-funding-effective-immediately" and Musk stopped responding. 22 Blue States just filed a lawsuit against Trump's NIH for this today, by the way.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/08/nih-cuts-billions-dollars-biomedical-funding-effective-immediately/

https://bsky.app/profile/whodat35.bsky.social/post/3lhs2r5x2fs2i

Reagan was talking about killing the DoE in the ‘80s.

Hopefully the chaotic way elon is approaching that conservative project will mean he undermines and discredits it

thats the scary part, obviously it's not above Elon to just lie about the shit he's doing but judging by basically every story i've ever heard about him and everything he's tweeted out there's a good chance he just has no fucking idea what he's actually cutting and is just listening to whatever the Nazis on Twitter are telling him

He’s going too fast to really know what they are doing. Their orders are to march in there and smash as much as they can before they are definitively stopped. They want to make irreparable changes quickly.

The rhetoric is the old conservative saw of small government, low deficits, etc. But i think there is more going on here. Elon and Trump are making a play for authoritarian power.

"they're angry all the time, like is none of that stuff actually bad for you"

remember though, they never ever have to do any of the dumb aggravating stuff that normal people have to do that can take years off of your life. change kitty litter. go to the dmv. cook. clean. drive a car. talk to anyone they don't want to talk to. do laundry. do bills. raise a kid.

But i think there is more going on here. Elon and Trump are making a play for authoritarian power.

you don't say!

trump is trying to include doge under the presidential records act, which would shield the "agency" from foia requests

But i think there is more going on here. Elon and Trump are making a play for authoritarian power.

sure, but more than that I think they're just trying to run the federal government the way they run their businesses - their main business is not cars or real estate or rockets or whatever, it's fraud, knowing how to keep stocks pumped without delivering anything, knowing how to work the courts so that all the losses fall on the little guy while you make obscene profits, the fact that they're doing this to the federal government which many many people depend on (and will probably succeed) is almost certainly going to be a humongous disaster

like it probably goes without saying but a CEO throwing out Hitler salutes in public probably isn't giving a lot of thought to how many cars they're gonna sell

There is a non-zero chance that Elon Musk will be murdered this year.

"Et tu, Big Balls?"

lolol

Just don't involve guillotines in your Musk murder jokes, it's bad form.

That Musk tweet about FEMA, “gross insubordination to the president’s executive order,” really needed to be followed by “RESPECT MA AUTHORITAH!”

‪Ryan Goodman‬ ✧@rgood✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
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25m
Judges aren't kidding around.

Federal judge not only just blocked Trump administration's attempt to cut NIH's funding of indirect costs (emergency motion for TRO was earlier today).

The judge has also imposed a reporting requirement to ensure compliance.

A bluesky post

https://bsky.app/profile/rgoodlaw.bsky.social/post/3lhu7q4sbac2g

Notable that it blocks the rule change in plaintiff states only — which is how a judge has to rule in that situation. I'm guessing that means it'll still take effect in red states? Basically, Trump-voting places will still be hurt?

Frankly I'm still reeling from the fact that all the Jan 6 guys got pardoned, even the ones who were convicted of assaulting police officers. All of them. Just out. No conditions of release.

Anyone who doubts that President Donald Trump wants to rule like a strongman should pay attention to the chilling pronouncement made by Vice President JD Vance on Sunday: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

Acting in its constitutional role, the federal judiciary has slowed the blitzkrieg launched by Trump and his field marshal, billionaire Elon Musk, against the federal government and the law. One of the latest roadblocks was erected in the early hours of Saturday morning when U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer ordered that Musk and his U.S. DOGE Service vandals be locked out of the Treasury Department’s vital payment systems, which are full of sensitive data.

Engelmayer’s emergency order is temporary, pending a court hearing on Feb. 14. The volatile Musk, predictably, raged on his social media platform X that Engelmayer was “a corrupt judge protecting corruption” and “needs to be impeached NOW!” But Vance’s post on X, though calmer in tone, was far more menacing — because it fundamentally challenges the Constitution’s system of checks and balances.

I need to quote Vance in full: “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

There are two possibilities here. Vance might just be blowing off steam. Or he might be presaging an attempt by the administration to take the unthinkable step of defying federal court orders, which would create an existential constitutional crisis.

we'll find out soon, i suppose

Augustus Caesar (nee Octavian) pioneered the trick of ruling by decree, then having a cowed and supine Roman Senate ratify his actions so as to preserve the appearance of the Republic in the form of a hollowed out shell. The Republican Congress seems eager to play this game with Trump, but because they're incapable of reaching enough agreement to pass any kind of legislation at all, they might miss the post-facto declarations of legality stage entirely.

Vance loves moldbug so we know exactly what he means by it

Vance's use of the word "legitimate" there is such bullshit. If courts aren't the arbiters of what constitutes legitimate executive power, then who is? (Never mind, I know the answer.)

i think they will pick their moment to ignore the federal judge, and it won't be this one. this one is about blocking elon musk, who most people hate, and doge, which will hopefully start pissing people off by name alone soon, from creepily accessing payment systems at the treasury department immediately upon trump's inauguration, like a literal invasion of privacy.

i'm not sure what a winning federal court-ordered issue will be for maga people, but it will be something, and then i think it's likely to get bad. i think that because last time around, a good # of republicans (including very prominent ones like cruz, hawley, etc) showed that they were willing to help with a coup, and not only were none of them punished, but most of the most vocal naysayers (not just liz cheney, blech, but also pence and third way people, blech, et al) are now banished from the party.

for all the shit he gets away with he has a notoriously bad record in court, which should continue to be the case even with conservative judges given how blatantly illegal most of this has been. the real showdown is gonna be what happens once he starts defying those orders. you'd think people would start getting arrested but given his firing of all the people who worked on J6 along with the fact that he let them all out of jail you have to wonder if they're really prepared to do the right thing. fun times ahead!

They’re definitely considering defying the court order but they might chicken out

He clearly will immediately pardon anyone working for him who runs into any legal issues at all. That's among the scary things here, is the blatant empowerment of anyone — cops, militia members, freelance vigilantes — who he perceives as doing dirty work on his behalf. As far as federal charges go, they all have get-out-of-jail-free passes.

Fortunately, a lot of the worst things they can do are also illegal under state and local laws, which will just depend on which jurisdiction they happen in.

I kinda wonder when the 'business community' (whatever that is) will start to step in here.. sure, they love deregulation etc but they also crave calm stability and none of this shit is heading in that direction

Maybe they don’t want stability. Shock Doctrine and all that

well I think the tariff shit invites an unwanted instability

It's pretty clear that the people who created Project 2025 were mostly focused on how to reshape the government to suit their radical right agenda. They seem to have no real plan to deal with the political fallout from rapidly imposing that agenda on the nation and world or else simply believed that such political considerations could safely be ignored. This assumption is going to be tested by political reality. I'm hoping for a severe public backlash demanding accountability, especially protests directed to (or at) members of Congress.

especially protests directed to (or at) members of Congress

saw an article today about GOP legislators terrified of Musk-funded primary challenges if they fall out of step

They seem to have no real plan to deal with the political fallout from rapidly imposing that agenda on the nation and world

Oh they have plans. The plans are to wait for widespread public outrage and protest, declare a state of emergency and institute martial law. Not nationwide, you can't feasibly do that and wouldn't need to. They'll focus on big cities in blue states, and especially obviously on D.C.

If Trump actually followed through and pardoned Derek Chauvin — as Jack Posobiec has promised he will — that might be all the trigger they need.

I'm not saying that will turn out well for them, but I think they do have a plan.

xp - Oh gosh! If I act to save the nation from catastrophe I might lose this cushy job! I am petrified by uncontrollable fear at the very idea.

Chauvin is serving his federal sentence concurrently with his state sentence, so a Trump pardon would have little practical effect fortunately.